


Steele Searching for the Words

by NorahBolt56



Category: Remington Steele (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:08:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25261363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorahBolt56/pseuds/NorahBolt56
Summary: This fic is set during 'Sensitive Steele' and is my take on Mr Steele's thoughts after his and Laura's argument...
Relationships: Laura Holt/Remington Steele
Kudos: 15





	Steele Searching for the Words

Remington stormed out of the ‘Latent Hostility’ session room and kept on walking. He didn’t care where he was going – he just had to get out of there and away from her for the time being. He had to fight his natural instinct to run and just keep on running, as he had done his entire life. “Latent hostility? Not bloody likely! More like outright, in your face hostility!” he muttered furiously under his breath as he tried in vain to calm himself down.

He felt raw - that was the only way he could describe it. Every one of Laura’s angry words had felt like a whip tearing at his heart & soul, cutting into him like he never thought words could, especially when she had said that she was better off without him.

“What about words?!” her demand reverberated in his brain - what about words indeed, he thought wryly as he shook his head. The irony was that she wanted him to tell her how he felt about her in words, yet the words she had just used had hurt him so. And he knew if he was being honest with himself, that his words had hurt her too. He had thrown in her face her deepest fear & source of pain - her abandonment by her father. While they had the ability to bring out the best in each other, he knew they also had the ability to bring out the worst in each other as well.

That was one of the reasons he had always relied on actions more than words to convey his emotions – words could trip you up, words could lie, words could wound. And yet words were what she needed from him apparently. Despite all the times he had tried to show her how he felt through his actions, he thought a little bitterly to himself.

He’d spent longer with her in Los Angeles than he’d ever spent anywhere in his entire life. And as he’d told her that time they’d been in Acapulco, it wasn’t just because he enjoyed playing detective or that he got a luxurious apartment and tailored suits thrown in for good measure. He’d stayed for her.

As infuriating and frustrating as she was at times, Laura Holt had worked her way though his defences and into his heart. The fact that she had followed him to London to find him when he had left to find his real name, had given him hope that she felt the same way. Yet they still couldn’t seem to find their way forward together and were still dancing around each other like they had done for the past three and a half years.

And part of moving forward, in his opinion anyway, was to finally consummate their relationship. But not, as Laura had just accused him of, because all he was interested in was getting her into bed. It was because he knew the best way for him to convey how he felt about her was to make love to her, and he also knew, despite the number of women he had been with over the years, that that would be the first time he would be really making love, not just having sex. He knew Laura was attracted to him as much as he was to her and she was hardly some inexperienced school girl, so her hesitation to sleep with him both baffled and frustrated the hell out of him. He’d lost count of the number of cold showers he’d had since he’d first walked into her life! Oh they’d come close a few times and he did wonder if they hadn’t been interrupted or Laura’s fears hadn’t got the better of her, if they would have ‘crossed that line’ before now.

When he’d first walked into her life and adopted the role of her fictitious boss, his ego had been bruised more than anything by her refusal to sleep with him. Ever since he’d had his first experience as a teenage boy he’d never had any trouble charming women into his bed – until he met Laura Holt that was. But as he had told her the very first day he met her, he was a man who enjoyed impossible challenges. And so they played the game - him pursuing and her running away, although to be fair, he had to admit on occassion it was Laura who had done the pursuing, such as on that night in Cannes when she’d given him all the signals that ‘tonight’s the night’, until she’d found another woman in his hotel room that was.

But as he had told her a few months back when she’d commented that the Remington Steele that had walked into her life originally wouldn’t have cared a fig what happened to her family, that Remington Steele had gone. And in his place was a man who truly cared about her and wasn’t just hanging around for a ’wink and a tumble’ as she had just described it. But as time had gone on the game they played turned into something else. To Remington, her hesitancy to fully share herself with him felt more and more like rejection. And try as he might to stop them, he felt his old fears & insecurities coming back to haunt him. That scared, vulnerable, unwanted little boy he had once been, who still dwelt deep within him, kept telling him he didn’t deserve her, that he was unworthy of love, that she would ultimately abandon him like all those others had done to him during his childhood.

He had never loved anyone in his life before he met her – he had never been taught how to, and he had no experience of what it felt like to be loved either. Until he had met Laura Holt. He could not imagine his life without her – he needed her with every fibre of his being. But he had never known how much love could hurt.

The next couple of days he fought an internal battle with himself. He tried to remain focused on the case and not get into it again with Laura, despite her efforts to apologise and talk about their argument. He knew he was hurting her by shutting her out but he needed space – he needed to work through the myriad of emotions he was feeling. He knew the things that kept forcing them apart needed to be dealt with before they could truly move forward – the hurts of their respective pasts, plus the hurts they had inflicted on each other.

And yet he knew he couldn’t turn his back on love, not now he had finally found it. He didn’t know why he found it so hard to say the words she needed to hear – he certainly felt them. He remembered back to that awful night when he had discovered her lying motionless in her loft after being shot, his worst fear seemingly coming to pass. He had cradled her in his arms, sobbing that there were so many things he wanted to tell her, so many things he needed to tell her.

Reliving that heartbreaking memory as well as his joy and relief when he discovered she was still very much alive, he knew he had to find a way to tell her, even if she didn’t feel the same way. He didn’t trust himself to be able to verbalize it but he realized there was still a way he could use words to convey what was in his heart.

So once they’d wrapped the case, while Laura was filing a report with the authorities he decided to take advantage of a few minutes to himself. He informed her he would grab their bags from the room they’d been staying in and meet her by the car when she was done. Once he was in the room he quickly found a piece of paper and a pen and began revising his original list of ‘Laura Holt’s most endearing qualities’…


End file.
